TibetTibet is a plateau region in Asia, north of the Himalayas. It is home to the indigenous Tibetan people, and to some other ethnic groups such as Monpas and Lhobas, and is now also inhabited by considerable numbers of Han Chinese people. Tibet is the highest region on earth, with an average...
, a historical plateau region in
Central AsiaAsia is a region of Asia from the Caspian Sea in the west to central China in the east, and from southern Russia in the north to northern India in the south. It is also sometimes known as Middle Asia or Inner Asia, and is within the scope of the wider Eurasian continent.Various definitions of its...
, today under the sovereignty of the
People's Republic of ChinaThe People's Republic of China , commonly known as China, is the largest country in East Asia and the most populous in the world with over 1.3 billion people, approximately one-fifth of the world's population...
and administered as the
Tibet Autonomous RegionThe Tibet Autonomous Region , also called Xizang Autonomous Region , is a province-level autonomous region of the People's Republic of China .Within the People's Republic of China, Tibet is identified with the Autonomous Region, which includes about half of...
is subject to many definitions and controversy over its function and boundaries as a country and what territorial claim it imposed.
Names
Names for "Tibet" range from the
Standard TibetanStandard Tibetan, often called Central Tibetan, in Tibetan script: བོད་སྐད་, is the official language of the Tibet Autonomous Region of China. It is based on the speech of Lhasa, an Ü-Tsang dialect of Dbus Ü, one of the Central Tibetan languages...
endonym
Bod to exonyms such as
Standard MandarinStandard Mandarin, or Standard Chinese, known by various names to native speakers, is the official modern Chinese spoken language used in mainland China and Taiwan, and is one of the four official languages of Singapore....
Tǔbō or
Tǔfān 吐蕃 and
English languageEnglish is a West Germanic language that developed in England during the Anglo-Saxon era. As a result of the military, economic, scientific, political, and cultural influence of the British Empire during the 18th, 19th, and early 20th centuries, and of the United States since the mid 20th century,...
Tibet.
In Tibetan
The Standard or Central Tibetan endonym
Bod "Tibet" is (
བོད་) is pronounced , transliterated
Bhö or
Phö.
Rolf SteinRolf Alfred Stein was a noted 20th century Sinologist and Tibetologist. He contributed in particular to the study of the Epic of King Gesar, on which he wrote two books, and the use of Chinese sources in Tibetan history...
explains,
The name Tibetans give their country, Bod (now pronounced Pö in the Central dialect, as we have seen), was closely rendered and preserved by their Indian neighbours to the south, as Bhoṭa, Bhauṭa or Bauṭa. It has even been suggested that this name is to be found in PtolemyClaudius Ptolemaeus , known in English as Ptolemy , was a Roman citizen of Greek ancestry. He was a mathematician, astronomer, geographer, astrologer and a poet of a single epigram in the Greek Anthology. He lived in Egypt under the Roman Empire, and is believed to have been born in the town of...
and the Periplus Maris Erythraei, a first-century Greek narrative, where the river Bautisos and a people called the Bautai are mentioned in connexion with a region of Central Asia. But we have no knowledge of the existence of Tibetans at that time.
Christopher BeckwithChristopher I. Beckwith is a professor of Central Eurasian Studies at Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana.He received his Ph.D. degree from Indiana University in Uralic and Altaic Studies ....
agrees that Ptolemy's geographic reference to the "Bautai – i.e., the "Bauts"" was "the first mention in either Western or Eastern historical sources of the native ethnonym of Tibet". He compares the 4th-century historian
Ammianus MarcellinusAmmianus Marcellinus was a fourth-century Roman historian. His is the second-to-last major historical account written during Antiquity...
describing the Bautai living "on the slopes of high mountains to the south" of
SericaSerica, the land of the Seres, was the name by which the Ancient Greco-Romans referred to a country in Eastern Asia. The Ancients' knowledge of this nation was indistinct and often distorted by the wildest fables and myths, though Ptolemy and Pliny the Elder present a description which is tolerable...
with contemporaneous Chinese sources recording a Qiang people called the Fa 發, anciently "pronounced something like Puat" and "undoubtedly intended to represent Baut, the name that became pronounced by seventh-century Tibetans as Bod (and now, in the modern Lhasa dialect, rather like the French
peu).
Bod originally named the Central Tibetan region
Ü-TsangÜ-Tsang , or Tsang-Ü, is one of the three traditional provinces of Tibet, the other two being Amdo and Kham...
or Dbus-gtsang.
This first mention of the name Bod, the usual name for Tibet in the later Tibetan historical sources, is significant in that it is used to refer to a conquered region. In other words, the ancient name Bod originally referred only to a part of the Tibetan Plateau, a part which, together with Rtsaṅ (Tsang, in Tibetan now spelled Gtsaṅ), has come to be called Dbus-gtsaṅ (Central Tibet).
In Chinese
Chinese languageChinese or the Sinitic language is a language family consisting of languages mutually unintelligible to varying degrees. Originally the indigenous languages spoken by the Han Chinese in China, it forms one of the two branches of Sino-Tibetan family of languages...
names for "Tibet" include ancient
Tubo or
Tufan and modern
Xizang , which now specifies the "
Tibet Autonomous RegionThe Tibet Autonomous Region , also called Xizang Autonomous Region , is a province-level autonomous region of the People's Republic of China .Within the People's Republic of China, Tibet is identified with the Autonomous Region, which includes about half of...
".
Tubo or
Tufan "Tibet" is first recorded in the (945 CE)
Book of TangThe Book of Tang Jiu Tangshu or the Old Book of Tang is the first classic work about the Tang Dynasty. The book began when Gaozu of Later Jin ordered its commencement in 941...
describing the Tibetan King
Namri SongtsenNamri Songtsen , also known as "Namri Löntsen" was, according to tradition, the 32nd King of Tibet , despite the fact he formerly ruled only the Yarlung valley, and later the central part of the Tibetan plateau...
(
Gnam-ri-slon-rtsan) sent two emissaries to
Emperor Yang of SuiEmperor Yang of Sui , personal name Yang Guang , alternative name Ying , nickname Amo , known as Emperor Ming during the brief reign of his grandson Yang Tong), was the second son of Emperor Wen of Sui, and the second emperor of China's Sui Dynasty.Emperor Yang's original name was Yang Ying, but...
in 608 and 609.
This ancient
Tubo/Tufan transliteration of "Tibet" is written with four
variant Chinese characterVariant Chinese characters are Chinese characters that can be used interchangeably. They are allographs, having the same pronunciation and meaning, but being different in appearance...
s:
tǔ 土 "earth; soil; land" or
tǔ 吐 "spit out; vomit" and
fān 番 "times, occurrences; foreign" (anciently pronounced
bō 番 "bold; martial") or
fān 蕃 "hedge, screen; frontier; foreign country" (usually pronounced
fán 蕃 "luxuriant; flourishing"). The latter two
fān Chinese characters are used interchangeably for "foreign" words, e.g.,
fānqié 番茄 or 蕃茄 (lit. "foreign eggplant") "tomato".
Fán is sometimes translated as "barbarian" meaning "non-Chinese; foreign".
Contemporary Chinese dictionaries disagree whether 吐蕃 "Tibet" is pronounced "Tǔbō" or
Tǔfān – a question complicated by the homophonous slur
tǔfān 土番 (lit. "dirt barbarians", possibly "agricultural barbarians") "barbarians; natives; aborigines". The
Hanyu Da CidianThe Hanyu Da Cidian is the most inclusive available Chinese dictionary. Lexicographically comparable to the OED, it has diachronic coverage of the Chinese language, and traces usage over three millennia from Chinese classic texts to modern slang...
cites the first recorded Chinese usages of
Tǔfān 土番 "ancient name for Tibet" in the 7th century (Li Tai 李泰) and
tǔfān 土番 "natives (derogatory)" in the 19th century (Bi Fucheng 薜福成). Sinological linguists are engaged in ongoing debates whether 吐蕃 is "properly" pronounced
Tubo or
Tufan. For example,
Sino-Platonic PapersSino-Platonic Papers is a scholarly monograph series edited by Victor H. Mair. The Submission Guidelines gives this description of the journal....
has been the venue for disputation among
Victor H. MairVictor H. Mair is an Indo-Europeanist and Sinologist, and a Professor of Chinese Language and Literature in the Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations at the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, United States...
,
Edwin G. PulleyblankEdwin George Pulleyblank FRSC is a sinologist and professor emeritus of the Department of Asian Studies at the University of British Columbia...
, and W. South Coblin.
The Chinese
neologismA neologism ; from Greek νές is a newly coined word that may be in the process of entering common use, but has not yet been accepted into mainstream language. Neologisms are often directly attributable to a specific person, publication, period, or event...
Tǔbó 圖博 (written with
tǔ 圖 "drawing; map" and
bó 博 "abundant; plentiful") avoids the problematic
Tǔfān pronunciation, and is used by authorities such as the
Central Tibetan AdministrationThe Central Tibetan Administration , officially the Central Tibetan Administration of His Holiness the Dalai Lama, is a government in exile headed by Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama, which claims to be the rightful and legitimate government of Tibet...
.
Stein discusses the
fan pronunciation of "Tibet".
The Chinese, well informed on the Tibetans as they were from the seventh century onwards, rendered Bod as Fan (at that time pronounced something like B'i̭wan). Was this because the Tibetans sometimes said 'Bon' instead of 'Bod', or because 'fan' in Chinese was a common term for 'barbarians'? We do not know. But before long, on the testimony of a Tibetan ambassador, the Chinese started using the form T'u-fan, by assimilation with the name of the T'u-fa, a Turco-Mongol race, who must originally have been called something like Tuppat. At the same period, Turkish and Sogdian texts mention a people called 'Tüpüt', situated roughly in the north-east of modern Tibet. This is the form that Moslem writers have used since the ninth century (Tübbet, Tibbat, etc.). Through them it reached the medieval European explorers (Piano-Carpini, Rubruck, Marco PoloMarco Polo was a merchant from the Venetian Republic who wrote Il Milione, which introduced Europeans to Central Asia and China. He learned about trading whilst his father and uncle, Niccolò and Maffeo, voyaged through Asia and met Kublai Khan. In 1269, they returned to Venice to meet Marco for...
, Francesco della PennaFrancesco Orazio Olivieri della Penna was a Capuchin missionary to Tibet who became prefect of the Tibetan Mission.Born in Pennabilli, Della Penna entered the Capuchin monastery of Pietrarubbia...
).
This
Fan 蕃 pronunciation of "
B'i̭wan" illustrates the difference between modern Chinese pronunciation and the
Middle ChineseMiddle Chinese , or Ancient Chinese as used by linguist Bernhard Karlgren, refers to the Chinese language spoken during Southern and Northern Dynasties and the Sui, Tang, and Song dynasties...
spoken during the
Sui DynastyThe Sui Dynasty followed by the Tang Dynasty and preceded by the Southern and Northern Dynasties in China. It ended nearly four centuries of division between rival regimes....
(581-618 CE) and
Tang DynastyThe Tang Dynasty was an imperial dynasty of China preceded by the Sui Dynasty and followed by the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms Period. It was founded by the Li family, who seized power during the decline and collapse of the Sui Empire...
(618-907 CE) period when "Tibet" was first recorded. Reconstructed Middle Chinese pronunciations of
Tǔbō and
Tǔfān "Tibet" are:
t'uopuâ and
t'uop'i̭wɐn (
Bernhard KarlgrenBernhard Karlgren was a Swedish sinologist, philologist, and the founder of Swedish sinology as a scholarly discipline...
) ,
thwopwâ and
thwobjwɐn (Axel Schuessler),
tʰɔ'pa and
tʰɔ'puan (Edwin G. Pulleyblank "Early Middle"), or
thuXpat and
thuXpjon (William H. Baxter)
Xizang 西藏 is the present-day Chinese name for "Tibet". This
compoundIn linguistics, a compound is a lexeme that consists of more than one stem. Compounding or composition is the word-formation that creates compound lexemes...
of
xi 西 "west" and
zàng 藏 "storage place; treasure vault; (Buddhist/Daoist) canon (e.g.,
DaozangDaozang , meaning "Treasury of Dao" or "Daoist Canon", consists of almost 5000 individual texts that were collected circa C.E. 400...
)" is a phonetic transliteration of
Ü-TsangÜ-Tsang , or Tsang-Ü, is one of the three traditional provinces of Tibet, the other two being Amdo and Kham...
, the traditional province in western and central Tibet.
Zang 藏 was used to transcribe the
Tsang people as early as the
Yuan DynastyThe Yuan Dynasty , or Great Yuan Empire was both the continuation of the Mongol Empire and the Mongol founded historical state in Mongolia and China, lasting officially from 1271 to 1368. Although the dynasty was established by Kublai Khan, he had his grandfather Genghis Khan placed on the...
(1279-1368 CE), and "Xizang" was coined under the
Qing DynastyThe Qing Dynasty , also known as the Manchu Dynasty, was the last ruling dynasty of China, ruling from 1644 to 1912...
Jiaqing EmperorThe Jiaqing Emperor was the sixth emperor of the Manchu-led Qing dynasty, and the fifth Qing emperor to rule over China, from 1796 to 1820....
(r. 1796-1820 CE).
Zang abbreviates "Tibet" in words such as
Zàngwén 藏文 "
Tibetan languageThe Tibetan languages are a cluster of mutually unintelligible Tibeto-Burman languages spoken primarily by Tibetan peoples who live across a wide area of eastern Central Asia bordering South Asia, including the Tibetan Plateau and the northern Indian subcontinent in Baltistan, Ladakh, Nepal,...
" and
Zàngzú 藏族 "
Tibetan peopleThe Tibetan people are indigenous to Tibet and surrounding areas stretching from Central Asia in the North and West to Myanmar and China Proper in the East and India, Nepal and Bhutan to the south.-Demographics:...
".
The
People's Republic of ChinaThe People's Republic of China , commonly known as China, is the largest country in East Asia and the most populous in the world with over 1.3 billion people, approximately one-fifth of the world's population...
government equates
Xīzàng with the
Xīzàng Zìzhìqū 西藏自治区 "
Tibet Autonomous RegionThe Tibet Autonomous Region , also called Xizang Autonomous Region , is a province-level autonomous region of the People's Republic of China .Within the People's Republic of China, Tibet is identified with the Autonomous Region, which includes about half of...
, TAR". The English borrowing
Xizang from Chinese can be used to differentiate the modern "TAR" from the historical "Tibet".
In English
The English word
Tibet was spelled
Thibet when first recorded in 1827. Etymologists generally agree that
Tibet names in European languages are loanwords from
ArabicArabic is a Central Semitic language, thus related to and classified alongside other Semitic languages such as Hebrew and the Neo-Aramaic languages. In terms of speakers, the Arabic macrolanguage is the largest member of the Semitic language family. It is spoken by more than 280 million people as...
Tibat or
Tobatt and
PersianPersian is an Iranian language within the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European languages. It is widely spoken in Iran, Afghanistan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and to some extent in Iraq and Bahrain, and has a status of official language in the first three countries under different names...
Tubbat – yet they disagree whether the ultimate source word was Tibetan,
TurkicThe Turkic languages constitute a language family of some thirty languages, spoken by Turkic peoples across a vast area from Eastern Europe and the Mediterranean to Siberia and Western China, and are considered to be part of the proposed Altaic language family.Turkic languages are spoken by some...
, Chinese, or something else (e.g., Stein's above reference to the
Tüpüt people northeast of Tibet).
The primary etymology is Tibetan
Stod-bod (pronounced
Tö-bhöt) "High/Upper Tibet" from the autonym
Bod.
Andreas GruschkeAndreas Gruschke Andreas Gruschke Andreas Gruschke (born on April 16th, 1960 in Tengen-Blumenfeld (Germany) is a German author, photographer and Tibet researcher. His scientific background is that of a geographer, sinologist und ethnologist....
's study of the Tibetan
AmdoAmdo is one of the three traditional states of Tibet, the other two being Ü-Tsang and Kham; it is also the birth place of Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama. Amdo encompasses a large area from the Machu River to the Drichu river...
Province says,
At the beginning of the Tang dynasty's rule of China, Tibetans were called Tubo, a term that seems to be derived from tu phod or stod pod (upper Tibet). The archaic Tibetan dialects of Amdo have retained the articulation of the medieval Tibetan language; as such the pronunciation is Töwöd, as in Mongolian tongue. Thus, the term was handed down as Tübüt in Turkish diction, Tibbat in Arabic and passed on as Tibet in Western languages.
The second "Tibet" etymology is Turkic word
Töbäd "the heights" (plural of
Töbän). Wolfgang Behr cites a French-language article that the four variant 土/吐-番/蕃 characters used to write
Tu-fan/bo (Middle Chinese *Tʰɔʰ-buan < Old Chinese *Thaˤ-pjan) "Tibet" suggest "a purely phonetic transcription" of an underlying *
Töpün "The Heights, Peaks" "Tibet" etymology from Old Turkish
töpä/töpü "peak; height". He further hypothesizes that the final
-t in
Tibet names derives from "an Altaic collective plural which results in *Töpät, thus perfectly matching Turkish Töpüt 'Tibet'", which is attested in the Old Turkic Orkhon inscriptions.
The third etymology is Chinese
Tǔbō or
Tǔfān "Tibet". This linguistic premise hinges upon Modern
Tǔbō having a Middle Chinese
-t final, e.g.,
Eric PartridgeEric Honeywood Partridge was a noted New Zealand/British lexicographer of the English language, particularly of its slang....
's hypothetical
Tu-pat, which few historical linguists reconstruct.
Geographical definitions
When the PRC government and some Tibetologists refer to Tibet, it means the areas covering
Ü-TsangÜ-Tsang , or Tsang-Ü, is one of the three traditional provinces of Tibet, the other two being Amdo and Kham...
and Western
KhamKham , is a region presently divided between the Chinese provinces of the Tibetan Autonomous Region, and Sichuan where Khampas, a subgroup within the Tibetan ethnicity, live. It is also one of the three traditional provinces claimed by the Tibetan government-in-exile...
, which became present-day the
Tibet Autonomous RegionThe Tibet Autonomous Region , also called Xizang Autonomous Region , is a province-level autonomous region of the People's Republic of China .Within the People's Republic of China, Tibet is identified with the Autonomous Region, which includes about half of...
, a provincial-level entity of the People's Republic. This definition excludes the former domains of the Dalai Lamas in
AmdoAmdo is one of the three traditional states of Tibet, the other two being Ü-Tsang and Kham; it is also the birth place of Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama. Amdo encompasses a large area from the Machu River to the Drichu river...
and eastern Kham which are part of
Qinghai' is a province of the People's Republic of China, named after Qinghai Lake. It borders Gansu on the northeast, the Xinjiang Autonomous Region on the northwest, Sichuan on the southeast, and Tibet Autonomous Region on the southwest.- History :Qinghai was only relatively recently made a province...
,
Gansu' is a province located in the northwest of the People's Republic of China. It lies between Quinghai, Inner Mongolia, and the Huangtu plateaus, and borders Mongolia to the north and Xinjiang to the west. The Yellow River passes the southern part of the province. It has a population of nearly 31...
,
YunnanYunnan is a province of the People's Republic of China, located in the far southwest of the country spanning approximately 394,000 square kilometers . The capital of the province is Kunming...
, and
Sichuan' is a province in Southwestern China with its capital in Chengdu. The current name of the province, 四川 , is an abbreviation of 四川路 , or "Four circuits of rivers", which is itself abbreviated from 川峡四路 , or "Four circuits of rivers and gorges", named after the division of the...
.
When the
Government of Tibet in ExileThe Central Tibetan Administration , officially the Central Tibetan Administration of His Holiness the Dalai Lama, is a government in exile headed by Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama, which claims to be the rightful and legitimate government of Tibet...
and the Tibetan refugee community abroad refer to Tibet, they mean the areas consisting of the traditional provinces of Amdo, Kham, and Ü-Tsang.
The difference in definition is a major source of dispute. The distribution of Amdo and eastern Kham into surrounding provinces was initiated by the
Yongzheng EmperorThe Yongzheng Emperor , born Yinzhen was the fourth emperor of the Manchu Qing Dynasty, and the third Qing emperor to rule over China, from 1722 to 1735. A hard-working ruler, Yongzheng's main goal was to create an effective government at minimum expense...
during the 18th century and has been continuously maintained by successive Chinese governments.
Western scholars such as sinologist A. Tom Grunfeld and anthropologist Melvyn Goldstein exclude Amdo and Kham from political Tibet:
- "When the Dalai Lama speaks of Tibet, he speaks for an area more than three times the size of the TAR in which Tibetans live (Kham and Amdo). The historical reality is that the Dalai Lamas have not ruled these outer areas since the mid-eighteenth century"
- "[Dalai Lama] claimed all of Kham and Amdo in the Simla Convention of 1913-14 – most of these areas in fact were not a part of its polity for the two centuries preceding the rise to power of the Communists in China in 1949....The term ‘Tibet’ refers to the political state ruled by the Dalai Lamas; it does not refer to the ethnic border areas such as Amdo and Kham which were not part of that state in modern times, let alone to Ladakh or Northern Nepal. Until recently, this convention was, as far as I can discern, universally accepted in the scholarly literature"
A modern nation-state usually has clearly defined borders at which one government's authority ceases and that of another begins. In centuries past, the Tibetan and Chinese governments had strong centers from which their power radiated, and weakened with distance from the capital. Inhabitants of border regions often considered themselves independent of both. Actual control exercised over these areas shifted in favor of one government or the other over the course of time. This history is conducive to ambiguity as to what areas belonged to Tibet, or to China, or to neither, at various times.
Rob GiffordRob Gifford is a British-born radio correspondent. He has degrees in Chinese Studies from Durham University and in Regional Studies from Harvard University. He began to learn Mandarin Chinese in 1987 whilst in China....
, a
National Public RadioNational Public Radio is a privately and publicly funded non-profit membership media organization that serves as a national syndicator to 797 public radio stations in the United States. NPR was created in 1970, following congressional passage of the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967, signed into law...
journalist, said that in 2007, the region sometimes known as "ethnographic Tibet," which includes sections of Gansu, Qinghai, and Sichuan that surround the TAR, has greater religious freedoms than the TAR since the authorities in Beijing do not perceive the Tibetan populations in the areas as having the likelihood to strive for political independence.
In spite of the changing nature of the recognised borders between the two countries over the centuries, and arguments about their positions (something common to many modern states as well), there were serious attempts from very early times to delineate the borders clearly to avoid conflict. One of the earliest such attempts was promulgated in the Sino-Tibetan treaty which was agreed on in 821/822 under the Tibetan emperor
RalpacanRalpacan , born c. 806, the Year of the Dog was, according to traditional sources, the 41st King of Tibet, ruling from the death of his father, Sadnalegs, in c. 815, until 838 CE...
. It established peace for more than two decades. A bilingual account of this treaty is inscribed on a stone pillar which stands outside the
JokhangThe Jokhang, , also called the Jokang, Jokhang Temple, Jokhang Monastery or Tsuklakang , was the first Buddhist temple in Tibet, located on Barkhor Square in Lhasa...
temple in Lhasa. Here is the main core of this remarkable agreement:
- ".... The great king of Tibet, the supernaturally wise divinity, the btsan-po and the great king of China, the Chinese ruler Hwang Te, Nephew and Uncle, having consulted about the alliance of their dominions have made a great treaty and ratified the agreement. In order that it may never be changed, all gods and men have been made aware of it and taken as witnesses; and so that it may be celebrated in every age and in every generation the terms of agreement have been inscribed on a stone pillar.
- The supernaturally wise divinity, the btsan-po, Khri Gtsug-lde-brtsan himself and the Chinese ruler, B'un B'u He'u Tig Hwang Te, their majesties the Nephew and Uncle, through the great profundity of their minds know whatsoever is good and ill for present and future alike. With great compassion, making no distinction between outer and inner in sheltering all with kindness, they have agreed in their counsel on a great purpose of lasting good—the single thought of causing happiness for the whole population—and have renewed the respectful courtesies of their old friendship. Having consulted to consolidate still further the measure of neighbourly contentment they have made a great treaty. Both Tibet and China shall keep the country and frontiers of which they are now in possession. The whole region to the east of that being the country of Great China and the whole region to the west being assuredly the country of Great Tibet, from either side of that frontier there should be no warfare, no hostile invasions, and no seizure of territory. If there be any suspicious person, he shall be arrested and an investigation made and, having been suitably provided for, he shall be sent back.
- Now that the dominions are allied and a great treaty of peace has been made in this way, since it is necessary also to continue the communications between Nephew and Uncle, envoys setting out from either side shall follow the old established route. According to former custom their horses shall be changed at Tsang Kun Yog which is between Tibet and China. Beyond Stse Zhung Cheg, where Chinese territory is met, the Chinese shall provide all facilities, beyond Tseng Shu Hywan, where Tibetan territory is met, the Tibetans shall provide all facilities. According to the close and friendly relationship between Nephew and Uncle the customary courtesy and respect shall be observed. Between the two countries no smoke or dust shall appear. Not even a word of sudden alarm or of enmity shall be spoken and from those who guard the frontier upwards all shall live at ease without suspicion or fear both on their land and in their beds. Dwelling in peace they shall win the blessing of happiness for ten thousand generations. The sound of praise shall extend to every place reached by the sun and moon. And in order that this agreement establishing a great era when Tibetans shall be happy in Tibet and Chinese shall be happy in China shall never be changed, the Three Jewels, the body of saints, the sun and moon, planets and stars have been invoked as witnesses; its purport has been expounded in solemn words; the oath has been sworn with the sacrifice of animals; and the agreement has been solemnized.
- If the parties do not act in accordance with this agreement or if it is violated, whether it be Tibet or China that is first guilty of an offence against it, whatever stratagem or deceit is used in retaliation shall not be considered a breach of the agreement.
- Thus the rulers and ministers of both Tibet and China declared, and swore the oath; and the text having been written in detail it was sealed with the seals of both great kings. It was inscribed with the signatures of those ministers who took part in the agreement and the text of the agreement was deposited in the archives of each party...."
In more recent times the border between China and Tibet was recognised to be near the town of
BatangBatang may refer to:* Batang Regency, regency in Central Java province, Indonesia* Batang, Batang, capital of Batang Regency* Batang County, county in Garzê Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, China* Batang Town, town in Batang County, China....
, which marked the furthest point of Tibetan rule on the route to
ChengduChengdu , located in southwest People's Republic of China, is the capital of Sichuan province and a sub-provincial city. Chengdu is also one of the most important economic centers, transportation and communication hubs in Southwestern China...
:
- "The temporal power of the Supreme Lama ends at Bathang. The frontiers of Tibet, properly so called, were fixed in 1726, on the termination of a great war between the Tibetans and the Chinese. Two days before you arrive at Bathang, you pass, on the top of a mountain, a stone monument, showing what was arranged at that time between the government of Lha-Ssa and that of Peking, on the subject of boundaries. At present, the countries situate east of Bathang are independent of Lha-Ssa in temporal matters. They are governed by a sort of feudal princes, originally appointed by the Chinese Emperor, and still acknowledging his paramount authority. These petty sovereigns are bound to go every third year to Peking, to offer their tribute to the Emperor."
Spencer Chapman gives a similar, but more detailed, account of this border agreement:
- "In 1727, as a result of the Chinese having entered Lhasa, the boundary between China and Tibet was laid down as between the head-waters of the Mekong and Yangtse rivers, and marked by a pillar, a little to the south-west of Batang. Land to the west of this pillar was administered from Lhasa, while the Tibetan chiefs of the tribes to the east came more directly under China. This historical Sino-Tibetan boundary was used until 1910. The states Der-ge
The Kingdom of Derge was an important kingdom in Eastern Tibet, a center of industry, religion and politics, with the seat of its kingdom in the town of Derge. The kings of Derge followed a 1300-year lineage....
, Nyarong, Batang, Litang, and the five HorHor was an Egyptian king of the 13th Dynasty. He appears in the Turin King List as Au-ib-Rê. He most likely reigned only for a short time, not long enough to prepare a pyramid, which was in this dynasty still the common burial place for kings....
States—to name the more important districts—are known collectively in Lhasa as KhamKham , is a region presently divided between the Chinese provinces of the Tibetan Autonomous Region, and Sichuan where Khampas, a subgroup within the Tibetan ethnicity, live. It is also one of the three traditional provinces claimed by the Tibetan government-in-exile...
, an indefinite term suitable to the Tibetan Government, who are disconcertingly vague over such details as treaties and boundaries."
Mr. A. Hosie, the British Consul at Chengdu, made a quick trip from Batang to the Tibetan border escorted by Chinese authorities, in September 1904, on the promise that he would not even put a foot over the border into Tibet. He describes the border marker as being a 3½ day journey (about 50 miles or 80 km) to the south and slightly west of Batang. It was a "well-worn, four-sided pillar of sandstone, about 3 feet in height, each side measuring some 18 inches. There was no inscription on the stone, and when unthinkingly I made a movement to look for writing on the Tibetan side, the Chinese officials at once stepped in front of me and barred the road to Tibet. Looking into Tibet the eye met a sea of grass-covered treeless hills. And from the valley at the foot of the Ningching Shan [which separate the valleys of the upper
MekongThe Mekong River is one of the world’s major rivers. It is the world's 10th-longest river and the 7th-longest in Asia. . Its estimated length is , and it drains an area of ....
from that of the
JinshaJinsha is an archaeological site in Sichuan, China. Located in the western suburbs of Chengdu, Jinsha was accidentally discovered in February 2001 during real estate construction. Located about 50 kilometers away from Sanxingdui, the site flourished around 1000 BC and shares similarities in burial...
or upper Yangtse] rose smoke from the camp fires of 400 Tibetan troops charged with the protection of the frontier. There was no time to make any prolonged inspection, for the Chinese authorities were anxious for me to leave as soon as possible."
André MigotAndré Migot was a French doctor, traveller and writer.He served as an army medical officer in WWI, winning the Croix de Guerre. After the war he engaged in research in marine biology, and then practised as a doctor in France, in his spare time climbing in the Alps and Pyrenees. In 1938 he set off...
, a French doctor and explorer, who travelled for many months in Tibet in 1947, stated:
- "Once you are outside the North Gate [of Dardo or Kangting], you say good-by to Chinese civilization and its amenities and you begin to lead a different kind of life altogether. Although on paper the wide territories to the north of the city form part of the Chinese provinces of Sikang and Tsinghai, the real frontier between China and Tibet runs through Kangting, or perhaps just outside it. The empirical line which Chinese cartographers, more concerned with prestige than with accuracy, draw on their maps bears no relation to accuracy."
Migot, discussing the history of Chinese control of Tibet, states that it was not until the end of the seventeenth century that:
- "the territories [of Sikang and Tsinghai] were annexed by the early Manchu
The Manchu people are a Tungusic people who originated in Manchuria . During their rise in the seventeenth century, with the help of Ming rebels , they conquered the Ming Dynasty and founded the Qing Dynasty, which ruled China until the Xinhai Revolution of 1911, which established a...
emperors in accordance with their policy of unifying the whole of China, and even then annexation, though a fact on paper, was largely a fiction in practice. In those days Buddhism, which had gained a strong hold over most of Central Asia, had been adopted by the Manchu Dynasty as their official religion, and the emperors even posed as protectors of the Tibetan Church.
- Although there was a short military campaign, as a result of which Chinese garrisons were established at Tatsienlu, at Batang (Paan), and at key points along the road to Lhasa, Peking formally recognized and even proclaimed the Dalai Lama as the sole temporal sovereign authority in Tibet. The Manchus contented themselves with appointing to Lhasa two special commissioners, called ambans, in whom were vested powers to influence decisively the selection of all future reincarnations of the Dalai Lama. By way of reparation, the Emperor regularly distributed handsome grants of money to the lamaseries and the local chieftains. These comparatively urbane relations between the two countries, which had unobtrusively given the Tibetan priesthood a vested interest in the Chinese administration, lasted until the Manchu Dynasty fell, and, while they lasted, Chinese armies from time to time entered Tibet on the pretext of protecting the country against Mongol invasions from Dzungaria. The Sino-Tibetan frontier was marked by the erection of a pillar on the Bum La, a pass which lies two and a half days' travel to the southwest of Batang; from there the frontier ran north along a line parallel to, and slightly west of, the Yangtze. All the territory to the west of this line was under the direct authority of the Dalai Lama, but to the east of it the petty chieftains of the local tribes retained, although they paid tribute to Peking, a considerable measure of independence.
- These arrangements failed to survive the blow dealt, indirectly, to China's position in that part of the world by the British expedition to Lhasa in 1904. In order to offset the damage done to their interests by the [1906] treaty between England and Tibet, the Chinese set up about extending westwards the sphere of their direct control and began to colonize the country round Batang
Batang may refer to:* Batang Regency, regency in Central Java province, Indonesia* Batang, Batang, capital of Batang Regency* Batang County, county in Garzê Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, China* Batang Town, town in Batang County, China....
. The Tibetans reacted vigorously. The Chinese governor was killed on his way to ChamdoChamdo , population about 86.280 in Kham in the eastern Tibet Autonomous Region, is Tibet's third largest city . It is located about 480 km from Lhasa, on the road the distance covers 1120 km or 1030 km...
and his army put to flight after an action near Batang; several missionaries were also murdered, and Chinese fortunes were at a low ebb when a special commissioner called Chao Yu-fong appeared on the scene.
- Acting with a savagery which earned him the sobriquet of "The Butcher of Monks," he swept down on Batang, sacked the lamasery, pushed on to Chamdo, and in a series of victorious campaigns which brought his army to the gates of Lhasa, re-established order and reasserted Chinese domination over Tibet. In 1909 he recommended that Sikang should be constituted a separate province comprising thirty-six subprefectures with Batang as the capital. This project was not carried out until later, and then in modified form, for the Chinese Revolution of 1911 brought Chao's career to an end and he was shortly afterwards assassinated by his compatriots.
- The troubled early years of the Chinese Republic saw the rebellion of most of the tributary chieftains, a number of pitched battles between Chinese and Tibetans, and many strange happenings in which tragedy, comedy, and (of course) religion all had a part to play. In 1914 Great Britain, China, and Tibet met at the conference table to try to restore peace, but this conclave broke up after failing to reach agreement on the fundamental question of the Sino-Tibetan frontier. This, since about 1918, has been recognized for practical purposes as following the course of the Upper Yangtze. In these years the Chinese had too many other preoccupations to bother about reconquering Tibet. However, things gradually quieted down, and in 1927 the province of Sikang was brought into being, but it consisted of only twenty-seven subprefectures instead of the thirty-six visualized by the man who conceived the idea. China had lost, in the course of a decade, all the territory which the Butcher had overrun.
- Since then Sikang has been relatively peaceful, but this short synopsis of the province's history makes it easy to understand how precarious this state of affairs is bound to be. Chinese control was little more than nominal; I was often to have first-hand experience of its ineffectiveness. In order to govern a territory of this kind it is not enough to station, in isolated villages separated from each other by many days' journey, a few unimpressive officials and a handful of ragged soldiers. The Tibetans completely disregarded the Chinese administration and obeyed only their own chiefs. One very simple fact illustrates the true status of Sikang's Chinese rulers: nobody in the province would accept Chinese currency, and the officials, unable to buy anything with their money, were forced to subsist by a process of barter."